Gone like an Autumn Leaf in December
by TheMayBellTree
Summary: In a world where humanity has beaten death, two young boys try to live. Saiouma Week Day 1: Pregame / Talent - WARNINGS INSIDE!


**Heyo! So it's Saiouma Week this week and I'm participating! Yay! For anyone following me: i love you it'll be updated on the 25th.**

 **TW: suicide, suicidal thoughts**

Kokichi Ouma's life was boring.

Dull. Monotonous. Insipid. Flat.

Kokichi's thumb immediately hit backspace on his google docs. Yep, not great. Now his main character just sounded like an elitist tool. Gross. Maybe he shouldn't have named his own protagonist after himself?

 _I'll change it when I go back._

Urgh, but names were _so hard_ to come up with!

 _Deal with it._

Kokichi slammed his feet up just next to his Dell computer and leant back in his chair, his eyes drifted to the bumps that the ceiling conveyed, to their messages perhaps - maybe that'd give him some inspiration, his own life wasn't a great source of it, look at his first fucking sentence.

Writing was hard. Why was he doing this again?

Oh, right, because his own life sucked. Might as well write some self-insert bullshit.

So when Kokichi sighed and looked to the lush tree just outside his bedroom window, he didn't expect much to happen. On this Earth, nothing happened. Everyone was happy. Even death had been beaten.

His application to Danganronpa sat untouched besides him.

* * *

The first time Kokichi met Saihara was by pure happenstance.

He had been fiddling with a spare penny he had found on his way to school - ha, even with all the advancements in electronic spending, _pennies_ of all things were still around, who'd have thought - and flipped it between his fingers, like a slot machine that just kept _going and going and going-_

and then he heard a scream.

For a moment, he paused, the 2016 rusted green penny stuck in between his forefinger and his thumb. He tempted a look around the construction district he often travelled on his way to school, at the pillars of scaffolding, at a high school dropout worker who seemed much too preoccupied with his earbuds and slacking off at actually constructing than the scream.

No one screamed again.

Kokichi resumed twirling the penny between his fingers, going along his merry way like nothing could stop him. If someone had died, they'd be brought back in the morning.

 _Unless they were crushed._

Even then, they could just replicate their DNA. It'd be fine.

Despite himself, as he passed by a clearing between two of the construction zones, he stopped. This sounded around the area that the scream had originated… so maybe…

He tempted a glance to his left, and right under a single, random pillar of scaffolding laid the mangled corpse of a boy, a splatter of blood under his body as his legs twisted at odd angles and his neck cracked and bled under the pressure of hitting the ground. His eyes were closed and his smile was _so serene_ that it was almost frightening, even when a single bead of blood flowed from his mouth and onto the ground and mingled with all the dirt and bacteria there and oh god.

This fucker killed himself.

Kokichi hopped over the police tape blocking the clearing from the construction zone, then paused, as that boy grinned at him even with that little droplet of blood dripping from his mouth, at the hat that rested besides him all splattered with his own blood. What the hell was he doing? Did he really want to go near a dead body? Just how fucked up was he?

Well he watched Danganronpa, so probably pretty fucked up.

Kokichi fell to his knees besides the corpse. A spot in the middle of the boy's lower arm was glowing a bright red. The authorities were already on their way. In just a couple of hours this boy would already be back in his living room, jerking off to animal porn or whatever it was that stupid fuckers like him did.

"You're an idiot, you know…" Kokichi couldn't hear himself speak. His own words sounded muted to himself, like a dull hum that his laptop would make when it was overheating. "The least you could do was sign up for Danganronpa. Then you would've really died."

Even though the corpse couldn't hear him, couldn't understand him or listen to him, Kokichi had never hated himself more.

* * *

From then on, every day remained the same. Kokichi would be walking home from school, twirling a pencil or a penny or on occasion even a half-dollar coin that he would randomly acquire on the way home, and every day he would hear a single, feminine scream. And then he would look to that piece of scaffolding like always and see a boy lying underneath it, in different poses, in different outfits - a school suit being the most common variation -, though his stupid striped hat would always remain the same. Occasionally it would still be on top of his head, though that was rare. Most commonly, it would lay a few feet from him, splattered in crimson blood and so grossly marred by dirt and scratches from where his overgrown fingernails might've slashed it. One time, Kokichi had actually found his hat before he had found the corpse, it had been directly on his pathway home. It had looked so unassuming, so pleasant, that if Kokichi had been anyone else and hadn't looked to his left, he might've thought it was just a hat that had fallen off of someone's head, that's all.

But then he looked to his left, and this time the boy's eyes were open and so haunting, yet Kokichi couldn't help but remark on the beautiful amber shade of the boy's eyes when he knelt next to him as he did every day, as he called him stupid once more like it was a daily ritual, even as he forced himself to place his fingers over the boy's eyes and close them.

"Saihara… Shuichi…" Kokichi fiddled with the boy's duct-taped wallet - wow, how creative - flipping it open and closed with practiced ease as he glanced over his school ID and matched the boy's alive face to his very much dead face. In the photo, his smile was much too forced - too unlike the ease of the smile on his face now - and wide, he showed his entire set of teeth even when his bottom half was completely crooked and jagged. His eyes, despite their beautiful amber hue, were almost terrifying in their intensity, it felt as if they were staring straight into his soul, just like they had been when he had met his dead gaze.

He tossed the wallet onto Saihara's chest, and the lightness of it caused it to bounce right off and onto the gravel floor beneath him, the rocks clipping his already fragile wallet. A penny fell out. 2016. Interesting.

"Hey, Saihara-chan," and Kokichi laid next to him, far enough away to not drench his uniform with blood but close enough to where he could smell the soft scent of his cologne - he _really_ poured that shit on, huh? - and see the faint lines and wrinkles of his face. "Who are you?"

He poked his cheek. It was clammy and cold and jiggled a bit under the pressure of his finger. It was absolutely disgusting and Kokichi _knew_ it was, but he was enthralled. What was he like in real life? Was he as beautiful as his corpse managed to be? "I have to leave soon, but…" and he gulped, like a nervous school girl confessing her love under the cherry blossom tree. "... I'd like to see you alive one day."

And with that he hopped up from the ground, brushed off his uniform of all the stray gravel bits, and started scampering home, a bounce in his step as he envisioned Saihara up on the scaffold the next day, and the next, and then the next, and maybe one day he would realize jumping was a useless effort and they could join Danganronpa together.

 _Shuichi Saihara, huh?_

When Kokichi got home and opened up his novel's document, he replaced his own name with Saihara's and began to type.

* * *

One day, the screaming abruptly stopped. For a second, Kokichi might've tempted on being hopeful, even when if anything that could've just meant Saihara had stopped being fearful of death. And then when Kokichi got to the clearing and looked past the police tape, he saw Saihara still laid dead on the ground, mangled and twisted and gross, and for the first time in a month Kokichi walked past the police markings and into town, to where his apartment complex was and where old women would yell out the window and protest for the old ways of death, over the balcony of their penthouses and down at the flooded streets below, where pedestrians would wander aimlessly and gape as they crossed busy intersections.

Kokichi would stare at the woman, with all of her wrinkles and her eyes that had seen far too much for it to be humane to still grant her life, and look deep into those blackened eyes and search for a trace of morality even from forty stories below. Occasionally the woman would meet his eyes and squint, and if Kokichi were any stupider he might've believed that they had a mutual understanding - a mutual wish for death in a stupid world with stupid, immortal people.

The next day, he was back to being by Saihara's side as the screams subsided, as his smile disappeared, as those beautiful amber eyes never were open like before.

And then one day, he didn't find Saihara's corpse.

He found him fully alive on top of that grey metal scaffolding, fifty feet above the ground as his legs dangled helplessly over the edge. He was hunched in on himself, his spine protruding as the top half of his uniform was covered by a black sweatshirt. He stared down at the ground below, and even though Kokichi couldn't see his face because of the distance he liked to imagine that it was nothing short of blank, like it would mirror his own everytime he looked in the mirror and saw his gross, sagging bags.

He stepped over that yellow caution tape as per usual, travelled to stand in front of the scaffolding where Saihara's corpse would often be, and knelt. He looked straight up at Saihara, even as the rocks cut through his pants legs and into his skin, and smiled as Saihara's corpse used to do. Saihara's eyes - those beautiful, terrifying amber eyes - squinted at him, as though disbelieving of his presence, and he tipped forward slightly, as though about to fall off, and then rocked backwards.

Saihara opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. By that time Kokichi had already jumped to his feet, grabbing hold of the scaffolding, heated under the afternoon sun, and began to climb up onto it like a little acrobat despite the fact that he was literally the least athletic person he knew. His feet skidded along the metal and the palms of his hands burnt, but he continued his quest.

"H-Hey! What're you doing? Y-You're going to - ah!"

The scaffolding shook and quivered as he climbed it. As he neared the top, Saihara's voice audibly became more panicked, a few random pants and screeches mixed in with his typical dissent. Ironic that a boy who killed himself everyday was afraid of falling with the scaffolding. Then again… if he was crushed…

 _he'd lose his memory._

His fingers felt like they were about to fall off. Jesus christ, how did Saihara manage to climb this monster everyday for the past two months? He didn't look much stronger than he was! The ridges of the metal bit into his skin and the superheated surface burnt it enough where he felt like his own tracker would go off if he stayed on it for too long.

After another minute of Saihara's sputters and his own grunts of exertion, Kokichi made it to the top and laid the top half of his body flat on the newly acquired ground. He stared up at Saihara through hooded lids, a whisper of a smile on his lips as he panted in shallow breaths. Saihara stared at him still, pupils blown wide and his lips parted just enough to communicate how he was truly feeling. With a sigh, Kokichi said, "... you're finally alive."

For a moment, Saihara didn't move. His legs still kicked over the side of the scaffold and that amber gaze narrowed just the tiniest fraction of an inch. Kokichi dragged himself up and onto his stomach, the grey, flat surface that the scaffold offered not faring much better temperature-wise than the sides of the scaffold but still enough to sear his bare skin.

He moozied closer to Saihara and joined him in swinging his feet over the edge. He looked different alive. He didn't look quite as carefree, his wrinkles were much more prominent, and as he gaped at him he could _really_ see just how messed up his bottom row of teeth was. And most importantly: his limbs were fixed. His blood was inside his body. His heart was beating inside his chest. His brain was working and channeling notions and thoughts throughout his body and somehow he looked much, _much_ better this way than he was dead or in that one ugly school photo.

"I've been waiting, ya know," and he wasn't lying, "it's rude to make me wait! So cruel, Saihara-chan!"

Saihara tilted his head so softly that it was almost like a confused pup. His face squinted in on itself and he shifted his legs away. "Uhm… how do you know my name?"

Kokichi hummed, shrugged, and stared up at a grey sky. He wondered how it looked when it was blue; if it looked as beautiful as it had often been suggested in those old literary tales or if it was just as ugly as it looked in this day and age. Despite that, as Kokichi sat next to an alive Shuichi Saihara and the clouds turned and moved above them and the sun began sinking lower into the horizon, he had never seen a more beautiful sight.

A moment passed. "Oh…" remarked Saihara, so softly that if Kokichi hadn't been right next to him he never would've heard it. "... you saw, then?"

"... saw what?"

The wind blew through the area and rattled the scaffolding just enough to startle the both of them. Kokichi jumped just the slightest bit and bit his lip as a squeal attempted to come out, but Saihara had no such reservations. He held tightly onto the side of the scaffolding, his fist holding it in a death grip as his knuckles became white. "It's…" he sighed, then tapped on Kokichi's shoulder. "It's dangerous up here. You should go back down."

Kokichi stayed silent. At that moment, he could've said a lot - challenged him on his hypocrisy, for one. But he didn't. Instead, after just a few moments, he said, "... your medical bills must be piling up."

"... yeah, they are." He didn't dare look at Saihara. He didn't want that weight on his shoulders. He merely watched his legs as they swung over the edge, as they twirled from a height that would easily kill him should he fall. "... there's nothing, by the way."

That peaked Kokichi's interest. He snapped his gaze up from his legs, his piercing violet eyes staring down Saihara as he shifted and tapped his fingers along the scaffold pipes. After a moment, he met Kokichi's eyes, cleared his throat, and in a voice that was far too hoarse to be wholly natural said, "there's nothing. I was curious, so I've been testing it out. And then… I kept testing. But nothing ever happened. I just kept waking up." He broke eye contact and stared over the edge again, almost contemplatively, like he was thinking thoughts that Kokichi didn't want to dare to break into. "I don't see how that's fair. What if I wanted to die?"

Kokichi was silent.

"... ah, I probably sound like a tool, huh? Complaining about being immortal. Wow." And he rubbed his hair, greasy enough to tell Kokichi that he was neglecting his hygiene. And he looked awfully tired too, if those thick bags were anything to go by. Ironically, sleeping 'forever' does not cure tiredness, duly noted. "I've been thinking about Danganronpa. I… I'd really like to be the Ultimate Detective! I just think they're so cool… and everyone that joins wants to die anyways, it wouldn't matter if I became a killer or a victim! But… to be honest I think I'd prefer…" he bit his lip, shook his head, and said, "nevermind."

Kokichi's mind drifted back to his own Danganronpa application, still sitting untouched in his bedroom. If he and Saihara joined together… he wouldn't die alone. Dying alone sounds boring. And sad. Despite himself, he bit out, "you're afraid of losing your memories from getting crushed, but you're not afraid of having your memories wiped and becoming an entirely new person?"

Saihara continued tapping and fiddling with the pipe he had been gripping before. "I… want to be a better person than I am now. I don't like myself." He glanced at Kokichi's backpack, and he cursed himself for forgetting to leave it down below. A single Monokuma pin sat visible for all to see, unabashed and unashamed, and Saihara quirked a single eyebrow, opened those flushed lips, and said so quietly that Kokichi almost felt horrible about being alive. "... do you?"

When Kokichi looked across the horizon at the now setting sun and the influx of construction workers now arriving in carpools and making their debut at the site, he felt a thud in his chest, like a boot stepping right into its' cavity and twisting and kneading his heart into shreds.

"... I don't know."

* * *

On the sixth day of December, Kokichi sat under a night sky with Saihara at his side, the two of them atop the scaffolding they often frequented after school. Kokichi tempted the thought of holding Saihara's hand in his own, of kneading his skin there and pressing it to his lips. He didn't. He listened to Saihara's retelling of the events that had occurred at his school, of an upperclassman who opted to pick on Saihara whenever the opportunity arose, and a girl that Saihara had set his sights on. He might've been a bit more snarky with his replies to that last situation than sympathetic, much to Saihara's chagrin.

"... have you seen that the fifty-second season is already starting back up? The fifty-third starts right after… I'm thinking about…" and he didn't finish his thought. Kokichi snuck his hand closer to Saihara, itching to grasp onto him yet not brave enough to convey how he truly felt. For Saihara, Kokichi was only a person who was just as obsessed with Danganronpa as he was. Nothing more, nothing less. Just that. "... would you miss me if I died? Like, permanently?"

At Saihara's tilted chin and skeptical, disbelieving tone, Kokichi scoffed. He was just fishing for compliments. That was it. Kokichi picked up his hand from where he left it and crossed his two arms on the scaffolding, leaning his chin against them. "Why would I miss you? You want to die."

For a good, long moment, only the sound of Saihara's sniffling could be heard. A snowflake landed on Kokichi's arm as winter truly began, then another, then another. The snow fluttered to the ground below and drifted through the air, towards where the construction workers were still working and towards the apartment complex that Kokichi already should've started heading to five hours ago.

Finally, Saihara whispered, "... I'd miss you."

"Huh?"

"Are we bad people, Ouma-kun?" continued Saihara, as though he had never spoken before in the first place. "Or is everyone else a bad person? Are we bad for wanting to die? Are we bad for celebrating a show that lets people who want to die finally die? I don't get it," he sighed, and when he released his breath a puff of frost followed. Under the shadow of the night, Kokichi couldn't see much of Saihara's turnt face other than the other boy worrying his lip between his teeth, as he often did when he was upset about something. Kokichi's grip on the scaffolding tightened. "I don't like myself much, but I don't like anyone else either."

When Kokichi looked up at the night sky once more, he swore that he might've seen a twinkle of a star behind a smog-covered sky. When he looked at Saihara, at all of his beauty and those beautiful amber-hued eyes one last time, he whispered, "I don't either."

He wasn't going to survive Danganronpa. He was weak, he didn't have the drive to live, and any version of him was doomed to die at least by chapter five, and that was being generous. As he fisted the completed Danganronpa application in his pocket and stared at Saihara with such wonder and awe that the entire world felt as if it might implode it on itself, his decision was final.

Whether he lived or died - whether Saihara lived or died, he was ready.

Is there really nothing, as Saihara said? Was he doomed to live and die a pathetic existence? Was there a god, was there a certain joy in death, would he be happy in his grave like many longed to be?

As he looked to the ground below the scaffolding - the same ground where he had talked and visited Saihara's corpse for months, he knew what he had to do.

 _I'll be there soon._

 **OOF. Very dark. Very much dark. But honestly I love this universe so I'll probably expand on it more in the future ;) Anyways, please leave me a review telling me your thoughts, thank you!**

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